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Sanctuary
Sanctuary
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Re: Another million lines
Dec 17, 2010, 15:40
nigelswift wrote:
He shows an actual track from where he is standing all the way to Avebury. It has four prostrate stones on it, just to the left of a line between him and Silbury. He labels it as "the track of the Avenue".

Interestingly, it runs across ploughed land and the furrows on each side of it curve downwards, very clearly suggesting the track was sunken (which would make it easy to have been ploughed out without trace in modern times?) and the furrows on each side don't correspond with each other - indicating the fields were definitely separated by the track and farmed independently. He'd need to be pretty crafty to depict all that if he couldn't actually see it all in front of him.

Btw he shows a house in the distance near to Silbury that is still there and he has it's positioning correct almost to an inch.

I personally think there's little doubt he saw and sketched a real track there in 1723, not a speculative one, and he believed, right or wrong, it was on the line of a prehistoric Avenue..... and actually, believing it was an Avenue doesn't make him the liar he's been called on the grounds no stones are there, now or originally. If only he'd said "here's the stoneless bit of the avenue" no-one would have said he was wrong to speculate that's what it was as no-one could prove it wasn't. ;)



Indeed. Why would someone feel the need to sketch in a track if it wasn't actually there. What would he hope to gain by doing that? The thing with well worn tracks is that they obviously became like that because they were well used. The fact the stones were mainly gone (it would seem) by then doesn't mean the track was no longer in use. In fact it suggests quite the opposite doesn't it.
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